Pavlos

Pavlos - Paris became a lifelong place of longing

Pavlos Dionysopoulos, born in Filiatra in the southern Peloponnese in 1930, moved to Athens with his family in 1947, where he attended the Art Academy from 1949 to 1953. After graduating, a scholarship from the French government enabled him to study in Paris. There, the 19-year-old Pavlos not only continued his studies at the renowned Académie de la Grande Chaumière on Montparnasse, but also developed a great love for the French capital, which was to have a decisive influence on his life. Paris in the 1950s was characterised by New Realism, which had developed as a counter-movement to Art Informel and Abstract Expressionism. Although Pavlos initially had to return to Athens in 1955, where he worked for a time in advertising and theatre to earn a living, he was able to travel back to Paris in 1958 and settle there permanently thanks to a second scholarship, this time awarded to him by the Greek state. 

Everyday objects made from strips of coloured paper

In 1960, Pavlos opened his first studio on Rue Vaugirard in Paris and found himself in the immediate neighbourhood of Jean Dubuffet. In the decade that followed, he was heavily influenced by the Nouveaux Réalistes and their founder Pierre Restany, whom he had met at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1963. In addition to Restany, Pavlos also cultivated fruitful contacts with the sculptors César, Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder and, as a result, turned away from traditional canvas painting in favour of assemblage and collage. He often cut up posters into thin strips, which he then glued onto his paintings in a specific shape which resulted in all kinds of everyday objects (bottles, coffee pots, sugar bowls and cups), which consisted only of thin strips of paper in different colours. The objects Pavlos reproduced and alienated in this way took on an almost organic quality that questioned the way these everyday objects are taken for granted and encouraged us to reflect on them.

Successful exhibition activity in Europe

In 1964, Pavlos had his first solo exhibition at the Galerie J in Paris, and in 1971, his first solo exhibition at the Goethe Institute in Athens. Since then, he exhibited regularly in Greece and also represented his home country at the 1980 Venice Biennale, where he was responsible for the entire pavilion. The artist, who since his first successes in the 1960s only appeared under his first name, became one of the most important representatives of Greek art on the international stage. Although he celebrated his greatest successes in Europe, namely France, Italy, Germany and, of course, Greece, his art also has transatlantic connections: In his play with everyday objects, he repeatedly referred to American Pop Art and its icon Andy Warhol, to whom he even dedicated an artistic homage. At the same time, he dared to critically question the uniqueness of a work of art in an age of ever easier reproducibility.

Pavlos died in 2019.